Is the problem that China is totalitarian and thus a terror campaign is hard to pull off? It's not like Arabs and Chechens and Iranians can hide among Chinese without being noticed. I'd also imagine when attacks do happen there's heavy censorship, which denies them publicity, further reducing the incentive to try it. Or is China's internal security just that good? Is al Qaeda and other groups just intimidated by China? Even so, I'm surprised there's been no word of anyone declaring jihad against China.

China was also the target of European colonial powers, so they tend to have less historical connection to the groups that are angered by Western infidels.

Philippines, Indonesia, and similar countries accepted or were overwhelmed by the European interests, so their fundamentalist Muslim populations could perceive the local governments as either oppressing Islam or supporting a corrupted Islam. The Chinese, particularly with the success of Mao's forces, effectively threw out all the Western influences so there was not the same sort of ongoing antipathy toward Islam when the end of the Cold War turned the various Muslim groups loose on the rest of the world. China has worked to bring/keep Iran within its sphere of influence, reducing the likelihood of anti-Chinese funding.

First, China does get terror attacks, though not that many. (Although to be fair, the United States doesn't get that many either. Our random violence doesn't tend to be terror so much as fame seeking white men with various mental problems. China gets those attacks as well, but their gun control laws tend to limit the damage.)

Second, China has stamped on terrorism with tools that are unavailable and undesirable in the West. The Great Firewall for one has limited the ability of radicals to recruit and communicate with new members. They also have a heavy surveillance state where people assume that they are being monitored at all times. Facial recognition software is used to track all movements for anything suspicious. They have essentially banned any public expression of Islam to the point where they do random cell phone checks to see if you have any religious material on the phone. Mosques are basically completely under surveillance at all times and no public official is allowed to enter a mosque for religious purposes. All children under the age of 18 are not allowed in any mosques. Beards and veils have been outlawed as well. There are even reports that they are running 'drinking and smoking' campaigns to encourage the behavior knowing that those who don't are more likely to be more religious and these people get sent away. They also do not allow freedom of movement for Muslims so they basically are contained completely within Xinjiang. One of their more interesting methods is called grid policing. There is a police station in every 'grid' of 500 people. The officers there are responsible for monitoring the 500 people within their grid at all times. They are also given quotas for finding 'extremists.' so even people who aren't particularly extreme at all get swept up in quota policing and sent to reeducation facilities. Fun times.

Speaking of 'reeducation tactics.' There are 11 million or so Uighurs in Xinjiang. Of those, 1 million are in 'reeducation camps' which are basically good old fashioned brain-washing facilities. People in these camps are sometimes just picked at random so they can later be released as good little Communists and be used to spy on others in the community. They use torture and repetition of communist creeds as well as educational materials. Fun times.

It should also be noted that the Chinese people do not have access to destruction like we do in the US. Their main methods are knife attacks and running cars into people. Explosives and guns are so tightly controlled as to simply be out of reach, so even when they do commit terror attacks, it's closer to 2 people dead instead of 50.

Is the problem that China is totalitarian and thus a terror campaign is hard to pull off? It's not like Arabs and Chechens and Iranians can hide among Chinese without being noticed. I'd also imagine when attacks do happen there's heavy censorship, which denies them publicity, further reducing the incentive to try it. Or is China's internal security just that good? Is al Qaeda and other groups just intimidated by China? Even so, I'm surprised there's been no word of anyone declaring jihad against China.

But China believes it was homegrown. Are they successfully keeping non-Chinese Muslims out to keep the pool of potential militants limited to Muslims already within their borders?

As senoy noted, they do actually get terrorist type attacks. Since they control the media and infrastructure they suppress quite a lot of what happens. But internally they tend to suppress such groups by the expedient of draconian restrictions, harsh punishments (including of course being executed and used for parts), and unbelievable levels of surveillance of the population. Externally, I don't think most Muslims are aware of just how harsh China is towards their Uyghur population...or what they could do about it in any case. China does actually have a base in Afghanistan (near the border) that seems to have the sole purpose of preventing Afghani's from entering the country that way as well as catching their own Muslim population from fleeing. Finally, China isn't a western power, so they tend not to be thought of in the same light with the same baggage of colonialism and centuries of historical conflict. China also has been spending quite a lot of money on their belt and road initiative, and they are spending it in several Muslim countries in the ME and Africa so that has bolstered their image quite a bit (though not sure how those countries feel about the debt trap and the fact that China mainly uses imported Chinese labor to do the projects instead of using local people).

Because trying to attack the Chinese by terrorist campaigns is like trying to attack the Americans by declaring war and openly marching toward their border, or like trying to overpower the Germans by clever engineering.

China has probably the biggest tracking system of citizens in the world, and has embraced big data like no one else without privacy controls.

Chinese Muslims generally are the Uighur minority in the far Western province of Xinjiang that borders India, Pakistan and some of the other 'Stans. The Uighurs can be instantly recognized as non Han Chinese, so can't blend into a crowd. They may not speak Mandarin or have a heavy accent.

Xinjiang has always been a border area. It was part of the Great Game and jostled by the British, Russians and Chinese. Xinjiang actually has some fairly strong claims to independence, and IIRC had issued passports and hosted a British Embassy in the 1940s.

I'm no expert but the Chinese muslims don't seem to have strong connections with the rest of the world.

Chinese Muslims generally are the Uighur minority in the far Western province of Xinjiang that borders India, Pakistan and some of the other 'Stans. The Uighurs can be instantly recognized as non Han Chinese, so can't blend into a crowd. They may not speak Mandarin or have a heavy accent.

There are a lot of Hui who can probably blend in well enough, but my understanding is that as a group and for a variety of reasons( including tension with the more numerous Uighurs and a good bit of minor preferential treatment )they tend to be rather less disaffected.

China has probably the biggest tracking system of citizens in the world, and has embraced big data like no one else without privacy controls.

No probably about it, they definitely have the largest and most sophisticated tracking system on the planet. Last time I looked they were approaching more cameras than the US has people, and they have plans to expand that even further. And your comment about the sophistication of their tracking AI is definitely on point...it's an awesome, if extremely scary system that allows the CCP unprecedented capabilities in facial recognition and even behavioral analysis based on image data, and allows it to actually be processed and tracked in real time and used, despite the massive amount of data we are talking about with all that implies. Hell, they are even incorporating it into their social credit system and having it make automated decisions that affect all aspects of Chinese life.

There are a lot of Hui who can probably blend in well enough, but my understanding is that as a group and for a variety of reasons( including tension with the more numerous Uighurs and a good bit of minor preferential treatment )they tend to be rather less disaffected.

I didn't want to confuse non-Sinophiles. Yes, the Hui can probably pass as Han Chinese on looks if they shave and change their clothing.

I don't know what % but a significant proportion of the Hui essentially don't eat pork as their only Muslim practice. They don't speak anything but Chinese, don't do prayers, don't face Mecca, etc. I guess one could make an analogy with non-observant members of the Jewish community.

1) Lack of foreign funding for terror groups. Seems like the idea that militant groups can survive on their own doesn't really work in the real world. Unless Saudi Arabia or Iran are willing to fund Chinese militant groups and face the consequences of doing so(China is probably a lot less wiling to play diplomatic games like the West is over that issue), then militant groups, such as they are, are totally on their own.

2) Lack of propaganda on the Arab street about China. I guess since a) China isn't a historical colonial power and b) China is a financial benefactor and c) China would actually cut off funds if media reported negatively on them in the region, then that means there's no way to whip up anger against China the way anger is whipped up against the West, Israel, and India.

But there does seem to be a lesson there for the West. First, we should stop playing games. For a brief moment after 9/11 we acted like we were all done with that, but our relationship with Saudi Arabia made that inoperable. If we actually threatened financial and security consequences for screwing with us by funding terror or whipping up hatred against us in the Arab media, maybe that would produce results. Right now, Saudi Arabia especially knows there are no consequences for funding terror or teaching their people to hate their "allies". Maybe there should be consequences, like, "The Saud royal family will be on their own. Good luck staying in power without foreign support."

On a related note, the New Republic has published an article about how universities avoid criticizing China. China's ability to be relatively popular in the world despite being basically the worst country in the world is a pretty remarkable feat:

President Obama used to talk a lot about "soft power", as in feel good stuff that would supposedly make people like us better. But China's use of it's soft power in less kind ways seems to be a lot more effective. Criticize China? Maybe you won't get access to conferences, Chinese scientists, or joint Chinese-American programs.

Seems to me that one of the no-brainer bills that Democrats should pass once they take Congress, and that Trump would almost certainly sign, is a bill making it illegal for US companies to aid China in their censorship. Google openly aids the Chinese government for profit. There are already laws on the books banning US companies from interfering in foreign governments or bribing officials. While this would technically be cooperating with a government, US companies should not be directly implementing repressive foreign governments' policies.

But there does seem to be a lesson there for the West. First, we should stop playing games. For a brief moment after 9/11 we acted like we were all done with that, but our relationship with Saudi Arabia made that inoperable.

Plus, that whole "invading a country that had little or nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks" might have been a factor in completely undercutting the "not playing games with you anymore" meme. But I digress.

The First Emperor of China supposedly killed about 1/3rd of the male population by forcing them to construct the Great Wall. All rejoiced.

John, King of England lost a war in France and his barons rose up and forced him to sign the Magna Carta.

If you lock up everyone who even seems like a problem, and break them, then you're not going to have much crime nor terrorism. In the US, we have to prove that criminals are criminals. Over there, they just swoop in and make you disappear. You don't pull friends into criminality. You don't create a batch of single-mother baby-mamas.

Moral or not, it's quite possible that more lives are saved than lost by shutting down criminal activity before it can get started. The cost is that some innocent men who would never have done anyone wrong are going to be beaten by the police and returned to society as broken men.

Not to bust the bubble on a great theory, but you know China actually does have a lot of crime, right? And that a lot of folks that get locked up aren't actually criminals...right? You can get away with mass murder (or just running over someone with your car) if you have the right connections (and assuming your faction stays on top...gods help you when it no longer is, as you are almost certainly going to be arrested for 'corruption'), or you can be arrested, tortured, executed and cut up for spare parts if you meditate. I don't think China has a great model on stopping crime or terrorism through draconian measures, even if that were a good thing.

Not to bust the bubble on a great theory, but you know China actually does have a lot of crime, right? And that a lot of folks that get locked up aren't actually criminals...right? You can get away with mass murder (or just running over someone with your car) if you have the right connections (and assuming your faction stays on top...gods help you when it no longer is, as you are almost certainly going to be arrested for 'corruption'), or you can be arrested, tortured, executed and cut up for spare parts if you meditate. I don't think China has a great model on stopping crime or terrorism through draconian measures, even if that were a good thing.

Also true. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if the most successful serial killer ever is alive right now in China.

Not to bust the bubble on a great theory, but you know China actually does have a lot of crime, right? And that a lot of folks that get locked up aren't actually criminals...right? You can get away with mass murder (or just running over someone with your car) if you have the right connections (and assuming your faction stays on top...gods help you when it no longer is, as you are almost certainly going to be arrested for 'corruption'), or you can be arrested, tortured, executed and cut up for spare parts if you meditate. I don't think China has a great model on stopping crime or terrorism through draconian measures, even if that were a good thing.

The way they stop crime and the way they stop terrorism are two separate things. They stop crime poorly. Their justice system is a system for hire that completely favors the rich. Justice is partially arbitrary, so you can end up in just as much trouble for reporting a crime as you can for committing it. The police forces are things to be feared instead of things to help. It makes crime a problem.

Terrorism on the other hand, they fight by non-arbitrary and very targeted oppression. They know that terrorism is largely going to come from Uighurs, so they isolate and destroy Uighur culture and identity ruthlessly. They identify the culture as a problem, so they commit cultural genocide against it. It's very different than how they handle crime among the Han population.

The way they stop crime and the way they stop terrorism are two separate things. They stop crime poorly. Their justice system is a system for hire that completely favors the rich. Justice is partially arbitrary, so you can end up in just as much trouble for reporting a crime as you can for committing it. The police forces are things to be feared instead of things to help. It makes crime a problem.

Terrorism on the other hand, they fight by non-arbitrary and very targeted oppression. They know that terrorism is largely going to come from Uighurs, so they isolate and destroy Uighur culture and identity ruthlessly. They identify the culture as a problem, so they commit cultural genocide against it. It's very different than how they handle crime among the Han population.

That's true, and I wasn't saying otherwise. Was responding to a specific point in a post. That said, they aren't exactly stellar in stopping terrorism either, as there have been several acts in the last decade...some that killed quite a few people. And this despite draconian measures, especially against their various ethnic minority groups. But they certainly commit 'cultural genocide'...ironically, the CCP has done a bang up job of killing the core traditional CHINESE culture. Even their written language. Certainly their history. Then you have the CCP's control over the internal and external message, so when terrorism does happen it often doesn't make a huge impact wrt the news inside or outside of China, unless it's to China's (the CCP's) advantage to make it known.

But I think the answer to the OP has already been covered. It's a combination of things, but mainly it comes down to draconian surveillance measures, suppression of ethnic minorities again using draconian measures, a lack of awareness outside of China that this stuff is going on (and of course the CCP control the message internally, though it does get out), and the isolation of China wrt it's western borders for non-Chinese to come into China to do terrorism. It's a reason China has built several bases at choke points of access to and from China on it's western borders.

The way they stop crime and the way they stop terrorism are two separate things. They stop crime poorly. Their justice system is a system for hire that completely favors the rich. Justice is partially arbitrary, so you can end up in just as much trouble for reporting a crime as you can for committing it. The police forces are things to be feared instead of things to help. It makes crime a problem.

The wealthy are, like anywhere, a significant minority of the population. The homicide rate of China is negligible.

I'll grant that it could be false, but I think if it were significantly so then there would be articles to that effect.

White collar crime, though, obviously that's prolific but unmeasured since it's effectively legal so long as you are in favor with the right people.

Seems to me that one of the no-brainer bills that Democrats should pass once they take Congress, and that Trump would almost certainly sign, is a bill making it illegal for US companies to aid China in their censorship. Google openly aids the Chinese government for profit. There are already laws on the books banning US companies from interfering in foreign governments or bribing officials. While this would technically be cooperating with a government, US companies should not be directly implementing repressive foreign governments' policies.

Seems to me a no brainer with the Republicans controling both houses of Congress and the Presidency to pass this now. Pray tell why should this wait for Democrats to take Congress?

Trump has already started a trade war on physical goods. Why not one on software and services?

Finally, cite on Google openly aiding the Chinese government for profit? Sergey very famously pulled Google out of the China market in 2010, after very publicly throwing down the gauntlet earlier over human rights.

Ah, well in that case, we'll wait for after the mid terms when the blue tsunami takes both houses, Ryan retires, Mueller shows beyond the shadow of a doubt that if his money laundering debts to the Russians (and maybe the Chinese with N Korea having a small taste) are subtracted out, then he is effectively bankrupt and has no clothes. Pence has peripheral blood on his hands that no amount of genuflecting to his god can wash off, resulting both Mammon and church boy getting ridden out of the swap, and President Pelosi will put saving Chinese Muslims on her top 10 smite list to accomplish in the first 90 days.

I'm thinking decades ago some PLO terrorists kidnapped some Russian diplomats or something and the Russians sent in their special forces.

Chinese businesses and offices are all over the world. Then there are millions of Chinese tourists everywhere. Could they become targets?

They almost certainly will at some point, as they are heavily involved in projects in Africa, the Middle East, East Asia and many other places and in fact have a large military base in Djibouti...the first large external Chinese military base in Africa. There is quite a bit of tension in some of these projects, since local labor isn't being used, and instead Chinese workers are brought in. In addition, many see the way things are going with China's debt trap tactics, and that is certainly going to cause some heartburn once more countries default and China snatches up key pieces of infrastructure or real estate. This is already happening, but eventually it's going to heat up to the explosion point.

Seems to me a no brainer with the Republicans controling both houses of Congress and the Presidency to pass this now. Pray tell why should this wait for Democrats to take Congress?

Trump has already started a trade war on physical goods. Why not one on software and services?

Finally, cite on Google openly aiding the Chinese government for profit? Sergey very famously pulled Google out of the China market in 2010, after very publicly throwing down the gauntlet earlier over human rights.

Republican's don't really go for those sorts of regulations, so it wouldn't be an easy sell. In addition, there is more opposition on the Republican side to Trump's tariffs play than you'd think (and, ironically, more support from the Dems who have always favored tariffs). Republican's would see letting companies like Google do as they like wrt going along with the CCP in doing censoring (I'm surprised you don't know about this), thinking it pragmatic, while Dems would be more opposed on human rights grounds...and Dems are more likely to pass legislature that imposes restrictions and regulations.

As for your second paragraph, Trump's trade war is about a trade imbalance, at it's core, so why exactly WOULD he put restrictions on a US company doing business in China...that's exactly what he wants to 'fix' the trade balance after all. If Trump was doing this because of the threat the CCP is to US business, if he were doing this because the CCP uses state assets to basically steal and reverse engineer US (and many other countries) intellectual property to the benefit of Chinese companies then he probably would push for a ban on private US flagged companies in assisting the CCP in their efforts to censor everything or ban US flagged companies from complying with CCP mandates of tech transfer for companies doing business in China, but he's doing this for all the wrong reasons because of the trade deficit. He has a very simplistic view of how international trade works, based more on 'this number is definitely bigger than that one, so that's bad...must fix!'.

Maybe I wasn't clear. If Trump is really playing hardball, he has to include goods and services. Like Google access to the Chinese market, or enforcement of Windows licensing, and of course IP

BTW, I worked for MSFT China for quite a while and during the Google thing.

I'm unsure how you think this would be Trump playing hardball. Certainly, if his actual motive was different than 'we have a trade deficit' he'd do this. But as it's not, I have no idea why you think it would occur to him as he wants to increase US sales to China and restore what he thinks is a balance in trade between the two countries. I could be wrong, but I don't think Trump has a sophisticated enough position to know what IP is, or how Chinese knock-offs wrt trademark and licensing hurt us. He just knows that $500 billion plus is more than $200 billion plus because he saw it on Sesame Street once.

As for you working for MSFT, I did recall you saying that before, so that's why I was puzzled that you don't seem to know the latest from Google. It was, to me, an odd cite request coming from you.

The U.S. persecutes its domestic Muslims very little, but makes its presence in the Middle East strongly felt, siding with Israel, using its influence to undermine Palestinian hopes rather than dampen Israeli expansionism. It never acts to oppose Israeli terrorism, but opposes some Islamist terrorist groups with wide support. Wahhabism is unpopular among most Muslims so the U.S. alliance with the House of Saud is also a problem.

Chinese anti-Muslim evil may far exceed that of the U.S. but it's internal to China so does not impact on Middle East politics. China's internal affairs are largely irrelevant to Arab activists.

__________________andros had more faith in an American jury than I had; and he was right. I'm happy to lose a bet and hope this trend continues.

The U.S. persecutes its domestic Muslims very little, but makes its presence in the Middle East strongly felt, siding with Israel, using its influence to undermine Palestinian hopes rather than dampen Israeli expansionism. It never acts to oppose Israeli terrorism, but opposes some Islamist terrorist groups with wide support. Wahhabism is unpopular among most Muslims so the U.S. alliance with the House of Saud is also a problem.

Chinese anti-Muslim evil may far exceed that of the U.S. but it's internal to China so does not impact on Middle East politics. China's internal affairs are largely irrelevant to Arab activists.

True enough, though that might be changing. As China has become more active in the ME, Africa and South East Asia, etc, they are having more of a noticeable impact. And that impact has been mixed. On the one hand, China is willing to hand over bags of cash with (seemingly) no strings attached wrt human rights or government policy to do large scale infrastructure projects. A marked difference from the US and the west who often do put strings on any loans they are giving. The other side of the coin is, China is willing to work with often very corrupt regimes and put their countries into a huge debt trap, often gaining control of ports or other critical infrastructure as part of a repayment. Sure, some corrupt official getting their pockets lined today isn't going to care about giving up a port to the Chinese for 99 years...they got theirs, after all...but it's going to create an environment where a lot of folks are going to be pretty pissed off at the Chinese when they start putting the screws to the country in question. Especially since often the actual strings attached are that taking a large loan from China for a large infrastructure project really means that it will be Chinese labor doing the work, so the benefits to most of the people in those countries is pretty minimal (since in the end it will be China controlling it anyway).

Maybe my comments were not clear: Trump economics and trade is a freaking disaster, and using tariffs as a tool to correct trade imbalances shows how pathetically little he understands. "Trade wars are easy to win." If he's going to take a bat shit crazy approach, why not extend that to services, software and IP?

I hadn't seen that Google was making a serious play for China, and color me skeptical that they are or can. Given BATS (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent) dominance with government support, Chinese government control of information including search, and Sergey's original throw down, I'm just not seeing a credible Google campaign. Maybe it's insurance to have some sort of presence should controls relax and foreign companies are allowed to expand? Beyond that, I don't see the Chinese government allowing Google or any other foreign search engines to have anything beyond a token presence.

I agree...his trade policies and trade war are ill thought out (if we can give him the benefit of the doubt of thinking). I'd say he won't extend it to IP and software because those are coming from the US to China, not the other way around, and as I said I think he has a very simplistic view of how any of this complex trade stuff works. What he sees is X dollars the US spends on Chinese goods and services is less than the Y dollars the Chinese spend on ours, and what you are talking about would mainly be in the Y category from his perspective, so I doubt he's want to interfere with that...he, instead, wants to encourage more Y, as to him that's a good thing and a goal in and of itself.

I also agree with your assessment of Google's chances in China. Even leaving aside well established and supported home grown Chinese companies, they also have an uphill battle against the CCP, as you note. But your question was if Google had changed it's policy on openly aiding the CCP in their censoring bit for profit...and I was surprised you didn't know they had done so, in a to me vain attempt to gain market share in China. This was a contradiction to their old policy, which you noted.

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